


a light headed feeling

by lumberwoof



Series: elderbees au [3]
Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Look Ma I'm back on my bullshit, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Ruby and Weiss are there too, Yang's a gay disaster, in celebration of Blake's upcoming haircut in vol 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-16 09:23:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19645363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumberwoof/pseuds/lumberwoof
Summary: Blake’s hair is thicker than she expected, and it’s a strangely pleasant texture that Yang imagines is the result of her faunus genetics. It’smarvelous. Yang loses herself for a moment, carding her fingers through the black waves. She clears her throat, “Ready?”“Always,” Blake says.-Yang gives Blake a haircut.





	a light headed feeling

**Author's Note:**

> yeah this has been sitting in my drafts for a couple months now but considering the vol 7 stuff, I figured this was a good time to post this even though I’m feeling a bit rusty
> 
> crossposted on tumblr

It’s an innocuous enough event that sparks something in Blake. The group’s holed up for a few days, waiting for Ironwood to get in touch with Qrow. In the meantime, Ruby manages to find some electric clippers and practically begs Yang for a haircut.

Yang, despite her own personal disdain for haircuts, easily cleans up her sister’s overgrown bird’s nest into a neat undercut again.

“There you go sis,” Yang says. “Just the way you like it.”

Ruby runs her hands over the buzzed hair. “Ooh, it hasn’t been this short since my first year at Signal!” She’s clearly reveling in the texture, if the smile and excited wiggling in her seat are anything to go by.

Weiss affectionately rolls her eyes at Ruby’s antics, reaching for the broom she’d found earlier in preparation. Yang smiles at Weiss, raises the clippers in her direction. “You want one, too?”

“Hardly,” Weiss scoffs, as she sweeps up the surprisingly large amount of Ruby’s hair from the floor.

Yang laughs - her offer was clearly meant as a joke to get a rise out of Weiss - but the seed’s already planted in Blake’s brain.

She watches as Weiss finishes sweeping up Ruby’s hair and walks to the other room to dispose of it. Ruby follows, grabbing Weiss’ free hand and bringing it up to her fresh cut. “Weiss~! Feel it! Feel my hair!”

“I can already feel it, Ruby, you’re holding my hand!”

A low chuckle fills the room as the two walk away bantering, and Blake’s ears prick in Yang’s direction. Still smiling after her sister, Yang turns to finish cleaning up. Blake watches, dragging her teeth across her bottom lip, thinking. With just the two of them in the room now, there’s an opportunity.

Blake cautiously approaches, fingers gently circling her partner’s wrist. “Yang?”

“Yeah?” Yang’s soft in response to Blake’s touch, searching her face for any hints as to what this might be about. “What’s up?”

Nervously, Blake wets her lips, lets her fingers trail off Yang’s wrist. “Do you think… you could give me a haircut, too?”

“You—?” Yang pauses. “Uh, are you sure you don’t want a professional? I mean, I’m used to cutting Ruby’s hair but I don’t want to mess it up or anything.”

“Well, I highly doubt I’ll find a faunus friendly barber nearby.” Blake says, with more amusement than the statement probably warrants. “Besides, it’s nothing too dramatic—just a few inches off.”

Yang stays silent for a moment, considering. Her jaw shifts, working through what she’s going to say next. She takes in a breath. “Okay,” she agrees. “To where? Here?” Her hand presses against the hair between Blake’s shoulder blades.

“Shorter,” Blake says, taking Yang’s hand and guiding it to the top of her shoulder.

“That’s more than a few inches,” Yang says, unable to say anything else as Blake’s touch lingers.

“You can do it, though?”

Lips pursing and heat building in her palm, Yang does her best to focus on what’s being asked. She can definitely cut Blake’s hair passably, but it’s _Blake_. “Yeah, I can do that, but are you sure you don’t want to find someone else?”

She doesn’t intend it, but the question feels like it has a double meaning. Maybe Blake feels it, too, because she meets Yang’s gaze and holds it steady. “I’m sure,” she says.

“…Okay.” Yang swallows thickly and steps back, committing herself to the task. “Take a seat, Ms. Belladonna,” she says, tapping the chair that Ruby had sat in earlier.

Blake’s hair is thicker than she expected, and it’s a strangely pleasant texture that Yang imagines is the result of her faunus genetics. It’s _marvelous_. Yang loses herself for a moment, carding her fingers through the black waves. She clears her throat, “Ready?”

“Always,” Blake says.

She takes the scissors with her prosthetic hand (which isn’t affected by the nervous tremors running through the rest of her body) and makes an even cut. A weird feeling pools in her gut as she watches dark curls fall to the floor and quickly pile up, years worth of old growth being let go. Only the newer growth remaining.

Yang sets down the scissors, delicately moving Blake’s head this way and that to check her lines. Blake offers no resistance and there’s a power there that seems forbidden.

Sucking in a breath, Yang reminds herself that this is just like cutting Ruby’s hair. There’s nothing to be nervous about. She lightly combs through Blake’s hair, careful to avoid her ears, and makes sure her hair is falling naturally. “This is okay up here?” Yang asks, motioning to the strange way Blake’s hair folds around her ears. “I don’t really have a point of reference for this.”

Blake reaches up, fingers bumping against Yang’s as she combs through her own hair. “It should fall pretty evenly on either side,” Blake says. “As long as it looks okay, it’ll be fine.”

Yang looks over the hair carefully, rearranging a few strands before doing a final few cuts. After making sure the hair is still even in the back, Yang rests her hands on Blake’s shoulders, looks down at the top of Blake’s head. “What do you think?”

Snagging Yang’s scroll from the counter, Blake looks at her reflection in the front-facing camera. “It feels light,” she says. Her hand toys at the hair at the back of her neck, and she hums thoughtfully. She pulls at her bangs next, inspecting the length. "Give me the scissors.“

Blake deftly snips her own bangs. Yang watches, mesmerized as her partner’s transformation is complete.

A haircut is never something Yang would undergo for the sake of marking a new era in her life (her arm does a good enough job for that, thank you very much), but it seems to be something that works well for Blake.

Her hair still maintains its delicate curl. The nape of her neck is just peeking out between her newly cut hair and the top of her collar. The exposed bit of skin from her partner is somehow the most intimate thing Yang has ever experienced. She wants to draw her fingers lightly across it, hold it steady and secure in the cup of her hand, press the softest of kisses to it while hair tickles her nose.

She doesn’t do any of those things, though. What she does do is wet her suddenly dry lips and move her hands from Blake’s shoulders to the back of the chair, painfully aware of the sweat building on her palm. "Looks good,” she says.

Blake turns her head, inspecting as many angles as she can. “It’s… better,” she says, smile growing by the second. “I was worried I wouldn’t like it, but now I’m considering going even shorter.”

Cutting off even more hair isn’t something Yang would be opposed to. It’s really her own hair that she’s protective about (heck, she just shaved two-thirds of Ruby’s hair off), but Blake already looks so good right now. Still, she’ll bite her own tongue off before she talks Blake out of something that she wants. “Should I get the clippers? Or do you want to think on it a bit?”

Blake runs her fingers through her hair and Yang can see her smile in the screen of her scroll. Yang chews at her lip, desperate to touch.

“Yang?”

The voice snaps Yang back into focus and she realizes she’s been asked a question, Blake looking at her over her shoulder, waiting for an answer.

_(“I don’t know, what do you think?”)_

“I…” I don’t want to pressure you. I don’t think my opinion matters. It’s your hair. Yang bites back every deflective phrase in her vocabulary and focuses on answering Blake’s question, trusting that Blake wants her answer because she asked for it specifically.

“It looks good,” she says. The words feel too little, too flat. She wets her lips again, breath catching in her throat. “ _Real good._ Like—” super good, pretty, gorgeous, beautiful, wonderful—"yeah.“

"Like, yeah?” Blake teases.

Yang should be embarrassed, but she’s not. She’s too enraptured by Blake’s shining eyes. “Yeah, one hundred percent.”

“Alright, I’m trusting you on this one.”

She fluffs her hair one more time as she stands and Yang notices a few stray strands still clinging to the back of Blake’s neck.

“Oh, hold on,” she brushes the strands away without thinking, fingertips gliding over the soft nape of Blake’s neck. It punches a bolt of heat right to Yang’s gut.

“Got it?” Blake asks, voice barely a whisper, when Yang doesn’t immediately remove her hand.

“Uh, yeah,” Yang pulls her hand away, wiping it on her pants to get rid of the sensations of Blake’s warm skin from her fingertips.

Blake turns and leans into Yang’s side, bumping her head into Yang’s jaw. A gesture of affection, Yang’s learned.

“Thanks, Yang. I needed that.”

Yang swallows, wraps her arm gently around her partner. Tries not to think about the soft skin at the back of Blake’s neck and how she’d been allowed to touch it so easily. Tries not to think about how it’s only been a month since she felt so hollow and bitter, resigned to a life without the woman now tucked into her side. Her heart still needs some repairing, but it’s so full now that she knows there’s no going back from this.

Whatever _this_ might be.

“Anything for you, Blake.”

Blake steps away, eyes bright. She’s about to say something, right before Ruby shrieks loudly in the doorway. Yang watches as Blake is swamped by the rest of their team, both demanding to see her new haircut up close. The smile on Blake’s face as she shows off her new look is so bright, so genuine.

Yang can do nothing but watch, warmth overflowing in her chest.

 _Boy howdy,_ Yang thinks. _I am so screwed._


End file.
